Educational Goals of the Program

The goal of the orthopaedic surgery residency program is to provide an educational experience and environment so that at the completion of his/her training the physician has sufficient professional knowledge, skills, and the ability to practice competently and independently. To achieve this goal the following components are necessary:

Graduated Responsibility
The resident is allowed increasing responsibility for patient evaluation and management as clinical and surgical skills are acquired. The resident is supervised for the entire residency, but the amount of supervision varies with the stage of the resident’s training, degree of competence as judged by the faculty and the complexity of the task.

Case Material
An adequate volume and diversity of clinical exposure is available to provide a complete and effective educational experience. Residents perform an average of 1,250 cases during their orthopaedic training. This includes an appropriate number of cases in the following areas: trauma, adult reconstruction, pediatric, hand, foot and ankle, sports medicine, spine, oncology and metabolic disorders.

Faculty Support
The faculty at all participating institutions possess general and subspecialty expertise and provide instruction in a wide spectrum of orthopaedic disciplines; they serve as mentors and role models with respect to moral, ethical and patient care issues.

Residents are assigned a mentor for their first two years of training and then choose an advisor at the beginning of their third year of training. The mentor/advisor functions as a liaison between the department and the resident. Any problems that the resident may encounter can be brought to his/her mentor/advisor for assistance. The mentor/advisor also represents the resident at the semi-annual resident evaluation meetings and provides constructive criticism and guidance to the resident after these meetings.

The Boston University Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Program has a formal resident education committee to address educational issues. One resident from each year of the program sits on the committee.

Patient Care Experience
Residents participate in the entire process of patient care from initial visit to final discharge and are involved in the decision making process under appropriate faculty supervision.

Resources
Residents have access, twenty-four hours a day, to an extensive library collection of books, journals, videos, and other educational tools. Computer access for Medline searches and computerized resources is available. A bioskills laboratory is available at all times. This space is used for technical skills teaching on dry and wet preparations, and allows teaching of arthroscopic technique.

Research
A research committee helps residents with the design and implementation of their research projects. Completion of a research project, either clinical or basic science, is a requirement for graduation from the program.

Conference/Lectures
There are organized and structured conferences for the residents at all participating institutions. The residency program has a system wide, integrated two-year academic schedule that covers all orthopaedic educational topics. Residents rotating to Lahey Clinic, MGH, the Boston VA and BMC gather at BMC every Friday morning for three hours to receive didactic lectures given by program teaching faculty. At BMC ten hours per week is reserved for academic and didactic conferences. These conferences include grand rounds, anatomy, sports medicine, adult reconstruction, basic science, pathology, a lecture series by Dr. Robert E. Leach, foot and ankle, hand, trauma, spine, pediatrics and daily board rounds. There is also a monthly journal club where residents are taught critical analysis techniques relevant to scientific literature. Monthly hands-on bioskills workshops are also held whereby residents are given the opportunity to practice operative surgical and arthroscopic skills. Visiting Professors are invited for one-day educational symposia twice a year. While at Lahey Clinic, residents participate in grand rounds and case conferences, in addition to the didactic lecture series held on Fridays at BMC. At the Shriners Hospital there is an organized core curriculum for pediatric orthopedics with several lectures each week.

A two-day, annual trauma symposium with a nationally recognized faculty takes place every fall and is the most popular trauma course in the Northeast.

Residents attend specific educational courses at the expense of the department. In addition, the department sponsors residents to present their original research projects at nationally recognized meetings when accepted.